Hector Vachaud d’Arcole, an anti-hero, orphaned by his father who died at the moment of his birth, was born in a field hospital in 1916, his mother wanting to reunite with her husband.
Hector Vachaud, his first name is a misunderstanding, his mother confused Victor and Hector, and Hector has been a misunderstanding since the beginning of his existence. Throughout his life, he finds himself lost in the events of history.
Hector is twenty years old in 1936 and until his death in 1981, for half a century, Hector lives only for his horses or rather those of others. This novel is the story of an ordinary man, whose universe is equine, a horseman.
A hypocritical universe, that of this bourgeoisie of propriety. Hector at the riding school sees children, adolescents, and parents parading before him. One must appear and be. In this world, Hector is at ease as long as he remains in the saddle and directs the exercise, but as soon as he dismounts, he is lost, bewildered in a world he does not understand and which does not understand him.
So to be ahead, calm and upright, he has only his horses. Also, when he can no longer ride them, he has no reason to live. Hector Vachaud d’Arcole refuses to be anything other than being ahead, calm and upright.
François Nourissier offers us here a magnificent novel, a depiction of bourgeois society (in the pejorative sense of the word) a hypocritical world without any pity.
Thierry Jan.
